Stellar Development Foundation core team lead discusses Soroban's mainnet activation, protocol upgrades including SecP256R1 for passkeys and BLS12381 for zero-knowledge contracts, and upcoming improvements like parallel execution and state archival to scale responsibly while maintaining decentralization.
The speaker recaps Soroban's journey from testnet to mainnet activation and outlines the foundation's technical roadmap across multiple protocol versions. Protocol 21 introduced the first Soroban runtime upgrade and SecP256R1 support enabling passkeys. Protocol 22 adds constructor improvements and BLS12381 for zero-knowledge applications. Protocol 23 focuses on state archival, parallel Soroban execution across multiple cores, and a new WASM runtime. The foundation has achieved 90% reduction in core space requirements and released 26 CLI versions. Key future priorities include scaling responsibly through performance improvements, enhancing decentralization by reducing validator specs, addressing front-running mitigation, and improving developer experience. The speaker emphasizes increased ecosystem collaboration, sharing roadmaps with competing implementation branches, and leveraging community participation beyond just code contributions.